yungcoder

> The overhead from the consensus algorithm serves no purpose and will only limit throughput of the whole system, and appears to be there here no reason other than apparently cargo culting public blockchain technology which is not designed for this use case.

I may be behind on Libra news, but my understanding was that the permissioned blockchain governance model would only exist during the bootstrapping phase to launch Libra and would eventually evolve into a public blockchain once it reaches some arbitrary point of stability. If that is still the case, then wouldn't Byzantine fault tolerance be required from the get-go, assuming Facebook wants to avoid a hard fork of Libra?

So stating an opinion with valid comparisons is simply just flaming now, eh? Good to know the concept of "genuinely new" is up to you and you alone to decide.

1. China and Taiwan have had several skirmishes since the PRC came into being in 1949 -- there just haven't been any in recent times since China doesn't want to risk American intervention or accidentally hitting a US Navy ship in the Taiwan Strait. The status quo is China effectively allows Taiwan to function autonomously so long as they don't claim outright sovereignty, which is when China starts flexing the warhammer. The current government in Taiwan has floated the idea of declaring independence far more openly than in the past which combined with Trump's wishy-washiness on alliances raises the risk that China might try something, even if not outright invasion.

2. Japan committed some horrific atrocities they have yet to atone for and Shinzo Abe is certainly not helping the situation with his nationalist rhetoric either, but China is chomping at the bit to justify a conflict with Japan (see the Diaoyu/Senkaku island situation). I take it you're familiar with Korean history and current events, so it's effectively the whole comfort women dispute x10.

3. What the rest of the world sees of Chinese social media is likely a filtered version, and some platforms like Tik Tok straight up have different versions for China/the rest of the world. Who knows, perhaps the excessive rhetoric there is just users trying to buff up their social credit score, but the fact that there are different versions for Chinese users and external users feeds the divide (probably by design).

4. Nobody can know the full extent of what goes on there given how deep Chinese surveillance runs, but we can draw a negative inference from that itself. Why does Xinjiang need special surveillance programs and restricted access even beyond the measures already imposed in the rest of China?

I get the comparisons can be a touchy subject but I think the world ought to have its moment of reckoning with China sooner rather than later, since later might turn out to be too late.

Well even if having the resources of the largest colonial empire in history wasn't enough to allow the UK to win a war in 1938, what about in 1933? 1934? 1935-37? When the Germans seized the Rhineland in '36 they could have been easily steamrolled by a French-British alliance and that would have been the end of Nazi Germany then and there. Nazi Germany was only able to become the juggernaut it was because of the years of appeasement leading up to that point and I think we can agree by the time they became an apparent threat it was already too late. What I'm saying is if the parallel holds with China today, we are barreling towards 1938 at alarming speed and this time I don't think the world can afford to be wrong again.

Assuming you argue in good faith, how about this:

1. Germany annexed the Rhineland, Sudetenland, and Austria using the justification of unifying German-speaking peoples under a single banner. The Chinese line for Hong Kong and Taiwan is the same -- you look Chinese, you are Chinese and to say otherwise is treason and will get you labeled an American lap-dog. I can tell you this firsthand as a Chinese-American and if you need a more concrete example, just look at how the Chinese treated Gary Locke.

2. Revenge for the perceived humiliation of Versailles was a core driving factor for the rise of Nazism in post-Weimar Germany. If you can give me another explanation for the state of Chinese-Japanese relations, I will eat my words.

3. Go on any Chinese social media site and the amount of nationalist rhetoric you'll find is quite disturbing. Having pride in your country is one thing, to insist on your national, racial, and cultural supremacy is another.

4. Google what's going on in Xinjiang and tell me that doesn't stink of something.

Maybe I'm wrong and just being an alarmist, and it would certainly be in the best interest for the world if I were, but ask yourself -- what are the stakes this time if I'm not?

Between this and the NBA's capitulation to making the Rockets' GM retract his statements on Hong Kong, at what point does appeasement just become acceptance of China's behavior? Sure, from the individual business' perspective they don't want to risk alienating the Chinese government and losing the Chinese market, but if China sees that they can get their way by simply threatening foreign companies then it will just embolden them to push for more concessions down the road. Quite frankly this all stinks of 1930s European appeasement policy and we all know how that turned out.